Memoirs: An old short story

Incognito

Dear Eugène,

Before I die, I want to know that the family secrets are safe, my son. But by safe, I don’t mean to take all to the grave with me. It has often been asked: “Where did Monsieur Lacroix get all his money?” I know that my wealth has always been the object of much discussion, to say nothing of envy. And now as I lie on my deathbed, I feel the need to make my peace with myself and with all the people I cheated in the acquiring of this princely sum which never ran out.

It all started in 1946. I had spent the better part of five years at the fine Ecole d’Art studying the greats, perfecting my skill as a painter. But after the War, there was suddenly no need for painters. I turned from an artist into a ne’er do well who had nothing better to do. Now, having come into my uncle’s vast inheritance a few years before, I honestly had no need to work, but my pride was hurt nevertheless. I tried and tried to sell my paintings, but no one seemed to be interested in patronising a new artist. All my efforts to prove everyone wrong went in vain. In fact, I became the laughing stock of all my snooty colleagues. Unable to promote my own work, I took to promoting that of others.

See, the galerie d’art were now in the business of “Recreation”. Every generation has its peculiarities: with my father’s it was the Impressionists and their monopoly of the market and critics. With mine, it was Recreation. In retrospect, it actually represented the spirit of the times rather well. The whole world was trying to salvage a life from the remains of the War. Naturally the trend became to buy reproductions of the old recognisable works, rather than anything by an "upstart" like me. So even in Provence and Giverny, the market for art was, by 1950, a market only for the Renaissance.

And that, my son, is how I began to plagiarise. I had never dreamed that my first sale would be a daVinci. But cést la vie; such is life. But the trouble is it didn’t end there. The peculiarities of the last generation began to haunt me as well. The Impressionists struck again. Truly, history repeats itself. The people grew tired of the Renaissance once again, and began to demand more and more Renoir and other Impressionists. Now, as you know quite well, the Ecole d’Art is a very prestigious institution, and does not support the work of quasi-artists such as Renoir or even Monet. And yet here I was, copying Monet; I painted Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, The Water Lilies and the entire Peupliers series. But far from developing any liking for the despicable paintings of Claude Monet, my contempt for them only grew. I hated every fresh copy I made. If you remember, Eugène, I had a friend called Bazille. This Bazille was the only one who shared my grievances, being one of the Ecole himself. One evening, in jest, we made a bet with someone over whether we could make a copy of a Monet convincing enough to be called the original. Bazille confidently claimed to have his “Monet” lapped up by critics in a month. But then all of Monet’s works being in museums by then, it would be impossible to prove a museum to have a fake. It was then that it hit us that we should come up with an “undiscovered” Monet. We would Recreate him!

It took us about four months to complete the grand hoax. Bazille and I stood before our work and beamed: like new parents who see their own features in their children, we saw pieces of all his most revolting works in that amalgam which we called Incognito. One could argue that an Italian name was rather unlikely for Monet, a Frenchman. But we were cleverer than most. We placed the date of the painting as some time in 1907. Everyone knew that Monet discovered Venice at that time, and was known to have said that the unfamiliar buildings, coupled with his failing eyesight, seemed to conceal themselves from him.

So it came about that a never-before-seen Monet came to light in 1952. You might have noticed, Eugène, that we were not in this game for the money, but rather in order to put down a school of “art” we felt very strongly against. So when Christie’s, the single largest auction house in the world came to us with an offer of ten thousand pounds to sell the painting, we were, to put it mildly, shocked out of our wits. It became our goose that laid golden eggs. As we kept it longer and longer, its value kept mounting. And we stayed unknown. Christie’s has the strictest confidentiality rules imaginable. And in any case, in an organisation so widespread, it is near impossible to trace any seller. All they wanted was the painting to sell, and a bank account to send the money to. Of course, even if they happened to discover the fake, Christie’s was depending on this highly publicised deal to increase interest in their company, which had waned during the War. So we remained, as our painting, Incognito. It finally sold for half a million pounds sterling.

I imagine that had Bazille and I made ourselves known as the perpetrators of the most expensive hoax of that century, we would be behind bars for fraud and Christie’s would have shut down with that loss in credibility.

Even as I lie here, waiting to die, over fifty years later, I look about me and see the richest of furniture and the finest room I could hope for. And I cannot help but feel guilty for the riches I acquired, and feel penitent for the means I employed. I would go to confession today, my son, it is Sunday. But I cannot leave this bed I am confined to. Promise me, Eugène, that you will, in my stead, give this letter to the Padre and beg for forgiveness. For I wish not to be incognito before my Maker.

Yours truly,
Jean-Pierre Lacroix